The Notting Hillbillies

As our effort to reissue classic albums on 180-gram vinyl continues ever onward, we’re bringing you two very different albums this week: one’s a unique blend of folk, rock, and jazz from a singer-songwriter who’s never been afraid to challenge audiences, while the other is a country-inspired side project from the man who once sang of “Sultans of Swing.”

Joni Mitchell, Hejira: Originally released in November 1976, Mitchell wrote the majority of this album while on a car trip from Maine to Los Angeles, hence the inclusions of songs with titles like “Blue Motel Room” and “Refuge of the Roads.” While not a hit-single machine – only one song, “Coyote,” made even the slightest inroads on that front, and the only place it charted was in Canada, and only at #79 at that – Hejira is generally viewed as one of Mitchell’s classic ‘70s efforts, featuring a more jazz-influenced sound than any of its predecessors but still providing listeners with outstanding material, including the aforementioned favorites as well as “Amelia” and “Black Crow.” It’s perhaps not the best entry point to her career, but for those fans whose musical sensibilities had grown and expanded along with Mitchell’s, Hejira is a very fine piece of work.

In 1989, with the Travelling Wilburys having recently made the idea of super-groups seem cool again and Dire Straits having been formally dissolved, Mark Knopfler decided to fill the musical void in his life by teaming up with Guy Fletcher, Brendan Croker, Steve Phillips, and pedal steel player Paul Franklin to form a new band: the Notting Hillbillies.

Granted, Knopfler’s fellow Hillbillies might not have been household names, but their CVs were far from shabby: Fletcher had worked with Steve Harley and Roxy Music and had been playing with Dire Straits since ’84, Phillips and Franklin had their own street cred, and Croker and his band – the Five O’Clock Shadows – had been recording and releasing albums since the mid-‘80s.